More Articles

JERUSALEM — With relations between Israel and the United States in distress over deep
disagreements on Iranian nuclear negotiations and construction in West Bank settlements, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu froze plans yesterday for building in a particularly contentious area
outside Jerusalem known as E1.

But Israel’s housing ministry nonetheless approved spending nearly $13 million on initial
planning for nearly 20,000 new units in West Bank territory seized by Israel from Jordan in 1967,
which Palestinian leaders and left-wing Israelis condemned as a sign that Netanyahu was not serious
about the peace talks that started this summer.

A senior official in the prime minister’s office said Netanyahu had halted construction plans in
E1, a vast, hilly expanse between East Jerusalem and a large Israeli settlement called Maale
Adumim, so as not to exacerbate tensions with Washington and the West.

A year ago, Israel prompted an international uproar by declaring its intention to build there a
day after the United Nations voted to upgrade the Palestinians’ status to an observer state.
Palestinians contend that construction in E1 would split their future state.

“At this moment, when we want the focus of the international community on Iran, it just doesn’t
make sense to point people’s attention to an issue which ultimately has no real significance,”
Netanyahu said yesterday.

As to broader plans approved by the housing ministry, the official played them down as part of a
“yearly bureaucratic process” and emphasized, “This is not construction — construction requires
separate decisions.”